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The real use of money is to buy freedom

paraschopra.com

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Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#201

Post by twoodfin »

benched wrote: post #162
coldtea wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This assumes that wealth is a zero-sum game, so it can be traded around but not created. And it very much is. > It's hard to reconcile that view with the fact that standards-of-living have been growing, more or less worldwide, for the two centuries. Those are not personal wealth. Increased standards of living are a kind of background element, as they are more or less shared by the population. Statistically they eve…

This trope is so tired. Yes, I live better than a medieval peasant, and I have access to more computing power than ever. Yet, the standard of living across my entire family and most people I know is blatantly lower, in terms of human basics like housing and togetherness, than in my grandparents time, despite the fact that my grandparents were factory workers without even high school educations, and I am an experience…

I think you have a rose-tinted view of the past. To take one example: I have much more togetherness with people in my family who would not be currently alive had they died of diseases with dramatically higher mortality rates 40 years ago.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#202

Post by run4_too »

gnaritas wrote: post #143
bermanoid wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To swat down an argument one need only show that it's flawed, not that its converse is proven.

True, but you can do so without fallacious reasoning that make you both wrong. Wealth is sometimes a zero-sum game and sometimes not a zero-sum game; not everyone who makes money is creating value for the world, but they usually are.

Value for the world != things I happen to think are worth a lot.

Your view is hampered by your ignorance of the definition of the word value.

If people are making money (i.e. selling a product or service for a profit) they are by definition creating value by default.

The fact that you may not find what they are doing valuable is as irrelevant to the equation as the fact that I don't like broccoli.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#203

Post by Casseres »

sliverstorm wrote: post #191
Casseres wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's per year and doesn't keep up with inflation. To have financial independence, you need enough money so that $75k or whatever annual number you want is derived from the earnings of whatever your your sizable chunk of money is invested in.

What does financial independence have to do with that number? The article is about "happiness" and "enough". Fuck-you money is not required for either of those things.

The theme of this discussion is about freedom. That includes not having to rely on an external source of spending money, yearly income, "fuck-you" money, or whatever you want to call it. This is also known as financial independence.

The $75k per year has to come from somewhere. If it's not interest from an investment or some other automatic payout, then you are not free because you have to work at making sure you always get that $75k a year to be happy.

In paraschopra's comment about calculating how much is enough, he mentioned life expectancy. That tells me is isn't just considering an annual amount of money to be happy, but a greater amount from which the annual money comes from.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#204

Post by kazagistar »

sliverstorm wrote: post #194
base698 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me personally I know it's way more than $75k but less than $200k. I have expensive hobbies and like to to travel without blowing my savings.

Of course expensive hobbies require more money. However the point of that article is (vaguely and generally across the people they studied) your expensive hobbies and traveling do not increase your happiness as much as the pursuit of the extra money decreases it. In other words, you get some combination of diminishing returns on happiness per dollar, and increasing cost of happiness per dollar. $75k is the proposed s…

The study says no such thing. It only makes claims about averages, not about individuals, just like every other study.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#205

Post by bmelton »

reginaldjcooper wrote: post #146
marknutter wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bill Gates paid 30 cents of every dollar in exchange for access to an educated and healthy workforce, use of the interstates for shipping, use of the police and military for protection, and use of a contract law system. You make it sound as though it's a willful transaction between two parties. Yes, taxes go to those things, but it's compulsory. If I don't like Microsoft I can choose not to buy their products. If I…

Right? But the GP was asserting minimum wage is a willful transaction also. Actually if the laborers don't like their minimum wage, they cannot opt out of it either, they need to eat, pay for housing, and get medical insurance from somewhere. It's absurd to me that someone would assert that Bill Gates is being dominated by paying taxes whereas these other people are somehow not being dominated by accepting a low wage…

They can't opt out of minimum wage because there are laws, not because it's otherwise coerced.

There are compelling arguments in favor of abolishing the minimum wage, just as there are compelling arguments in favor of increasing it. Neither position is necessarily wrong, and each requires making trade-offs for the other, but either way, the imposition of a minimum wage is not voluntary to those upon which it is imposed.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#207

Post by mortyseinfeld »

nexttimer wrote: post #80
miles wrote: post #21

Tim O'Reilly on money: It’s easy to get caught up in the heady buzz of making money. You should regard money as fuel for what you really want to do, not as a goal in and of itself. Money is like gas in the car — you need to pay attention or you’ll end up on the side of the road — but a well-lived life is not a tour of gas stations! Source: http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/01/work-on-stuff-that-matters-...

> The real use of money is to buy freedom The real problem is: This additional freedom you can buy with money means less freedom for somebody else. Inequality (wealth-based) means nothing else than domination. If you are richer, then you dominate the poorer people. And richer countries dominate poorer countries. This is the most basic and fundamental injustice [0] we seem to accept in our Western culture. Because we…

That's just a flat out lie.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#208

Post by esw »

mathrawka wrote: post #88
esw wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's difficult to see beyond your immediate problems when you're broke and living month-to-month. My guess is that anyone who says $5k will solve 'all of their money worries' is probably not including retirement in that figure.

Those people are thinking they will never be able to retire, so why include that?

For what it's worth, I think most people think their financial situation will eventually improve (even if they're wrong).

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#209

Post by kazagistar »

hkmurakami wrote: post #52
joosters wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good thing about being rich is that you could be poor whenever you want. What? Name some rich people who are now voluntarily poor! I'd happily bet that 99.9999% of multi-millionaires never choose to be poor in their lifetime. But I'm sure lots of them feel amazing about thinking how they could help people.

I do know one heir to millions who lives on the streets and dumpster dives, thinking that it is morally wrong for him to make use of his monetary advantages in any way. Obviously not the norm.

While not so extreeme, I have a friend who is similarly an heir to wealth, and eats noodles and fast food and lives in a teeny appartment.

Re: The real use of money is to buy freedom

#210

Post by refurb »

gress wrote: post #175
refurb wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually houses have gotten significantly larger since the 1950s.

Houses affordable by single wage earning families? I think not.

Bingo! People talk about single wage earnings supporting a family and owning a house. Keep in mind that house was likely small by today's standards.

I don't think it's reasonable to complain that you can't sustain a family and a house that is 1.5x what they were in the 1950s, on a single income.

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